As recent voyages to Mars have shown, it’s not exactly an easy task for an unmanned probe operating in one small section of a planet’s surface to prove or even disprove whether or not some form of alien life might exist there. A Harvard researcher, though, has just come up with an innovative new chip that might be used in future space expeditions to sniff out whether the planet has life.

Developed by Gary Ruvkun, a professor of genetics at Harvard University, the chip is meant to ride along with soil-collecting rovers and search for microscopic life in the dust.

Here’s how it works. The chip uses a combination of a buffer solution, detergent and high-frequency sound waves to disrupt any cells that happen to be collected in its silicon honeycomb. This, in turn, would cause any microscopic bits and bobs of Martian life to effectively melt, unspooling their genetic material for the chips’ analysis. Once those tiny Martians have been melted, chemicals in the chip would amplify the DNA found and automatically label them with fluorescent dyes.

This seems like fascinating technology but we’re years away from one of these chips actually piggy backing its way to Mars: according to Ruvkun, he needs to figure out how to decrease the size of the chip by ninety seven percent before it’ll be small enough to go on a rocket ship ride.